


Red Sweat

by tristesses



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Fighting, Gen, Klingons, Other, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-03
Updated: 2012-01-03
Packaged: 2017-10-28 20:42:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/311994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tristesses/pseuds/tristesses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They won't go down without a fight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red Sweat

**Author's Note:**

> Written 12/22/2010.

Gaila knows almost everything about Uhura there is to know - from her childhood aspirations to her first kiss, from the violent way she flings her head back when she comes to her deepest shame - but there is one thing, one very important fact, that everyone knows about her: Uhura always keeps her head in a crisis. Uhura is stable; she's quick on her feet and sharp as a whip, as her grades and her friends will attest; most of all, Uhura's got your back. No matter what.

This quality has never been more important than now; another person might be doubtful, might fend for herself rather than risk being burned, but Gaila has faith in her. She always has.

"Ready?" Gaila asks, and Uhura turns her head and smiles. There is blood in her teeth, blood in her broken teeth and smeared down her chin, but there is a phaser in her hand ready to be fired, and her eyes are clear and steady. Gaila holds her gaze, returns that grin, savage this time; Uhura keeps her head in a crisis, and Gaila keeps her mettle.

"Born ready, partner," Uhura says, and they tear their eyes away from each other and fling themselves out from behind the crumbled sculpture they're using for cover; Gaila supports her weak wrist (broken, maybe, definitely sprained, but she's fought with worse wounds) with her other arm, aims, fires. _Set phasers to kill_ , she said earlier, and Uhura looked at her and switched the setting with a deadly click.

 _Set phasers to kill._

Her next shot catches the Klingon spy in the stomach, and blows a hole straight through the middle of him; inelegant, unnecessarily cruel (is there such a thing, with foes like these?), but that's what you get for dealing in shoddy Klingon weaponry. If only they'd had their Starfleet phasers - but no, it's impolitic to bring them to a diplomatic meeting. _Diplomacy my ass_ , Gaila thinks, and ducks while her phaser recharges. _No such thing, this close to Syndicate space._

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees a slavemaster sneak near Uhura, sickly green tinted in yellow, lowering his phaser - a good one, Federation issue, and wouldn't she like to get her hands on whoever's smuggling _those_ out of the system - and she screams, "On your left!"

Uhura glances around quickly, sees the slavemaster, and dodges, dropping to the ground just as the phaser-bolt goes whipping overhead, askew by a foot or more; Uhura keeps her head in a fight, but Gaila's got swifter instincts, and she'd already hit him with the last bolt her phaser had - now it's whining like they do when they're overheated, winding itself up for a blast, and Gaila throws it as hard as she can away from her, direction mattering little, flinging herself to the ground as the phaser explodes. Too little, too late - she needed better cover, she needed more time, and now there's shrapnel everywhere from the makeshift bomb and she's going to be hit -

A piece of stone smacks her skull, a blow hard enough to knock her to the ground if she wasn't there already, and when she tries to raise herself up on her elbows she trembles and collapses, her vision wavy and her head hazy - goddesses save her, she won't die belly-down in the muck like a worm, _no_!

Gaila turns her head, can't find Uhura, and some part of her flinches in fear but she's already dismissed that impulse, for the most part; it's a useless thing, to mourn in the midst of a fight. Looking to her other side, she closes her eyes and relies on smell, a handier tool when her vision's shot to shit; her nostrils flare, and the berry-sweet scent of Andorian blood fills her nose, down and to her right; she crawls on her elbows, first backwards, then to the right, following the stink, already tinged with rot noticeable only to an Orion nose, heedless of the fight just as it's heedless of her (she's just one more almost-corpse, after all) and opens her eyes only when she touches the rubbery skin of the dead Andorian. It's a _shen_ , dressed in Security reds (now stained berry-juice blue, oh goddesses), and Gaila doesn't know her name. She'd been stabbed in the stomach with a long-handled knife of Orion make, one Gaila knows how to use. For a moment, she quails (and when did she become so soft, to flinch away from a body?) but to hell with it - and she rips the knife from the _shen_ 's torso and flings herself to her feet.

She only wavers a moment before she senses someone behind her, and spins to face him; it's another Orion, and defense is easy, just like she remembered: stab in, pull up, twist out, spill his guts on the ground and kick him between the legs with titanium-reinforced Starfleet boots; and _spin_ to the next opponent. These moves are like dance, and she recalls them just as well.

But in the end, of course, she's fighting for nothing; she can't be naïve. She knows there's no getting out of this, not unless she can keep alive until the _Kmiki_ and the _Jefferson_ arrive, but that won't be for a long time; they're on the edge of Federation space, and no one expected this, the Klingons and the Syndicate, in bed together when they're supposed to be at war; Gaila could laugh, if she weren't so out of breath.

There! A flash of red uniform, dark skin, a fallen slavemaster trampled underneath Starfleet boots; Uhura, momentarily victorious. Gaila ducks her head and barrels through the melee; no time to be a hero now. The day is lost.

She'll die with her friend, anyway.

Uhura whips around when Gaila skids to a halt beside her; she's clutching a _bat'leth_ in her hands, deep maroon with Klingon blood, and standing like her ribs are broken, like she's wounded inside. They probably are. She probably is.

"Gaila," she says.

"Hey, baby," Gaila says back, and smiles. Uhura grins. There is blood in her teeth. Blood in her teeth, and Gaila wants to kiss her so badly, but instead she salutes, knuckling her forehead with the blade in her hand. Uhura holds her eye, shifts the _bat'leth_ to one hand, and salutes back; she knows what Gaila means to say. She's always known Gaila, too well.

"Ready?" Gaila asks. Precious few seconds, now; these will be the last words she'll ever say. She blinks; she's crying.

"We go down together," Uhura says. She's crying, but she's smiling, too.

 ****

. . .

It is early morning, fog rolling in, the sun barely cutting through the thick clouds. She is chilly and damp, in the grass, but Gaila stretches to greet the morning's rays nonetheless; her skin prickles, and she hikes up her shirt to feel the heat on her belly, the sunlight sparking photosynthesis in her flesh. New cells, new skin, new day; and beside her, a new friend, asleep on the grass. Gaila lolls her head to the side to looks at her, pretty, brilliant Nyota Uhura, who can match Gaila drink for drink and live to chat with her in class the next day. After last night's party, they crashed in the grass barely fifty feet from their dorm, sleeping with their backs pressed together; Gaila loves that, a closeness she hasn't shared with a female friend since she reached Earth.

Nyota murmurs a little, and rolls over, waking; Gaila waits until she's half-sat up before saying, cheerfully, "Hi, leaflet!"

"Leaflet? That's cute," Nyota says, and smiles down at her. She tilts her head to the sky, inhales the crisp air. "Look at this weather! I love it. Don't you?"

"Yeah," Gaila says. She's calm and peaceful, watching her friend's profile in the light. "It's a beautiful morning."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Red Sweat](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10084955) by [sophinisba](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophinisba/pseuds/sophinisba)




End file.
